Warner calls Gabbard to testify over GA election raid, Trump FBI call
Tulsi Gabbard, director of National Intelligence, during a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2025.
Yuri Gripas | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., on Tuesday called on Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard to testify in person before the Senate Intelligence Committee about her appearance at an FBI raid on a Georgia election office last week.
Warner, the vice chairman of the intelligence panel, said he was especially concerned that Gabbard facilitated a phone call between those FBI agents and President Donald Trump after the search warrant was executed.
“Let’s be clear: It is inappropriate for a sitting president to personally involve himself in a criminal investigation tied to an election he lost,” Warner told reporters on Capitol Hill.
The senator also sounded alarms about Trump’s recent suggestion that Republicans should “take over” and “nationalize” elections.
“That statement alone makes clear that this threat to our election security, the basic premise of our democracy, is forward looking to 2026 into 2028,” he said.
Warner’s comments turn up the volume on Democrats’ growing fears that Trump — who vehemently refused to accept his 2020 election loss, and continues to falsely claim that he won that race — may try to meddle in the upcoming midterms.
Even as the minority party, Democrats in the Senate have the power to compel people to testify.
United States Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard speaks on the phone while standing at the edge of a truck loading bay after the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) executed a search warrant for the Fulton County Election Hub and Operation Center in relation to the 2020 election, according to a law enforcement official familiar with the matter, in Union City, Georgia, U.S. January 28, 2026.
Elijah Nouvelage | Reuters
Warner accused Gabbard’s office of systematically “dismantling” various guardrails designed to protect elections.
“When you put all of this together, it is clear that what happened in Fulton County is not about revisiting the past, it is about shaping the outcome of future elections,” he said.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment on Warner’s remarks.
In a letter to Warner and other lawmakers on Monday, Gabbard said her presence at the Fulton County election office was “requested” by Trump and that she only observed the execution of an FBI search warrant there “for a brief period of time.”
Spokespeople for the county have confirmed that the federal agents were seeking records related to 2020 elections. Fulton County Superior Court Clerk Che Alexander told local outlet WSB-TV last week, “They took 24 pallets, which encompassed 656 boxes of 2020 election documents.”
Gabbard said in the letter that, as DNI, she has “broad statutory authority to coordinate, integrate, and analyze intelligence related to election security, including…
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